Chris Atkinson, Melbourne
"We support the mounting campaign of the Iraqi people to rid their country of foreign military occupation", said Adelaide Resistance activist Amy McDonell in the opening report of Resistance's national conference on April 10.
The report was the first of three that planned a renewed effort to build both a bigger movement against the occupations of Iraq and Palestine and a stronger campaign against university fee increases.
News of the rapid escalation of the Iraqi resistance campaign added pertinence to the conference's theme "Bring down the empire". The conference opening coincided with protests in more than 50 cities across the US to demand that the troops in Iraq be brought home.
After pledging Resistance's opposition to Australian government support for the military occupation of Iraq, conference participants converged on Melbourne's GPO for a public protest. Around 100 people listened to speeches condemning the occupation before flooding Bourke Street mall with placards, banners and loud chanting. Many onlookers waved, gave "thumbs up" signs and applauded.
After the protest, Indonesian student leader Gigih Guntoro addressed the conference, explaining that Indonesia's student movement must unite not only against the war on Iraq but also against the Indonesian military's war on the people of Aceh.
The conference also projected to build campus protests against fee increases for universities. A report by Perth Resistance activist Kiraz Janicke traced the development of the student movement through the 1960s youth radicalisation, the student movement against the war in Vietnam, the free education campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s and today's struggles.
Janicke pointed out that universities are increasingly geared to profit-making rather than learning and universities remain key arenas of struggle against prevailing injustices. The conference endorsed a renewed effort to build a stronger campaign against the occupation of Iraq on universities and to involve more people in Resistance on campus.
A session addressed by National Tertiary Education Union activist and national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance Louise Walker discussed how to build staff-student alliances against the privatisation of university education.
The conference was treated to an address by the ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Leonel Vivas, on the second anniversary of the defeat of the CIA-backed coup against the democratically elected revolutionary government of Hugo Chavez.
"The revolution unfolding in Venezuela is a struggle between the past and the future", Vivas told the conference. His speech preceded a screening of The Revolution Will Not be Televised, documenting the defeat of the coup by mass popular protest in April 2002.
The conference was Resistance's 33rd, marking 37 years since Resistance was formed out of the movement against the war in Vietnam. John Percy, national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (an internal current within the Socialist Alliance), described how Resistance provided a voice for young people fed up with war and the profit-driven capitalist system that breeds it.
He recounted how in 1968, a Resistance activist interrupted a speech by the Sydney University vice-chancellor by streaking through the Great Hall with "No war" painted on his back before speeding off in a get-away car.
The conference wound up with a report by Resistance national coordinator Stuart Munckton that set out the key tasks for Resistance to build a stronger, more united socialist movement amongst young people in Australia. Munckton pointed out that while Resistance fully supports the Socialist Alliance and its steps toward becoming a united, multi-tendency socialist party, the alliance has not yet been able to attract large enough numbers of young people.
He argued that Resistance can play an important role in building the Socialist Alliance by "reaching out to, involving and training young people to be long-term socialist activists".
Munckton concluded his report with a famous quote: "Those who struggle for a day are good. Those who struggle for a year are great. But those who struggle for a lifetime, they are indispensable."
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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